Global Metal’s premise sounds more appropriate for a graduate thesis than a documentary. Directors Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen set out investigate how globalization has shaped heavy metal music in the past 20 years, and how the genre has been reimagined outside of its birthplace in the West, in countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, India, and Israel. This quasi-academic approach makes sense, though, since (as the film’s first five minutes explain), Dunn started thinking about filmmaking while pursuing his master’s degree in anthropology.
The real surprise, then, is that Global Metal—besides being well-researched and academically sound—is also fun to watch. It’s informative without being condescending, and shows a real exuberance for its
subject without annoying viewers who don’t already worship at the altar of Iron Maiden (myself among them).
As the film’s narrator as well as its biggest onscreen presence, Dunn is a major reason the film is so charming. He’s tall and lanky, forever wearing the same Mastodon t-shirt and awkwardly tucking his shoulder-length blond hair behind his ears. That earnest, unassuming quality makes him a likable character, but it also makes him an extremely effective interviewer: everyone seems to want to talk to the guy—not just Chinese record store owners and struggling metal bands from Iran, but ex-Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman (who now makes his career appearing on Japanese variety television) and even Lars Ulrich, the notoriously prickly drummer for Metallica.
More importantly, Dunn has good instincts as a director, and he knows how to follow his story as it develops. While attending a makeshift metal show at a hotel in Mumbai, he goes upstairs and sees a traditional Indian wedding reception being held essentially next door; what follows is a nice parallel where both groups—who seem to have no common ground—get absolutely caught up in the music they love. There’s another scene where Dunn interviews some rather militant anti-Zionist metalheads in Indonesia, and just when you start to wonder if his politics are beginning to creep in, he’s off to Israel to get the Jewish perspective firsthand.
How that perspective manifests itself in the music, however, is an entirely different question. In fact, I was astonished throughout Global Metal at how little the songs are
affected by their geographic or political source. Heavy metal remains in fierce competition with polka as the most repetitive music genre in existence, and this film did nothing to convince me otherwise. Sure,
Sepultura singer Max Cavalera claims to have integrated traditional Brazilian instruments into his band’s music, but all I hear is one muffled bongo drum behind the usual wall of undecipherable guitar noises and comically low-pitched growling. Aside from making the music
available to a wider audience, has globalization affected heavy metal at all?
Questions of taste aside, Global Metal doesn’t quite answer the questions it sets up in its first half. Dunn’s interstitial commentary tries to draw larger conclusions, but more often than not he ends up sounding vague or reductionist, and sometimes both at once. (“China is a country that’s changing rapidly.”) Heavy metal in the 21st century is a fertile topic, and Dunn is an able tour guide, but ultimately he and McFadyen leave even skeptics like me wanting more.
